Living And Lying And Longing And Dying
by sienna27
Summary: Missing Scene for Maternal Instincts.  Flynn comes to pick up Brenda at the hospital.  One shot.


**Author's Note:** Hello regular readers who have me on Alert, please be advised that this is not regularly scheduled programming. I've had an itch the last few months to write something for The Closer (really good show if you've never seen it), and I figured I'd just scratch the itch and then it would perhaps go away. That's the plan anyway.

As to those of you in The Closer fandom, hi! :) I know I'm new here and I don't know anyone on this board (I write over in Criminal Minds) but hopefully you won't mind me taking your toys out of the box for a few minutes.

So this is a missing scene from the episode Maternal Instincts. Towards the end, the boy had just died and Provenza leaves Brenda at the hospital telling her that Flynn would be by to pick her up. This opens with his arrival. It's all his POV.

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* * *

The Closer – Maternal Instincts_

**Living and Lying and Longing and Dying**

As Flynn stepped off the elevator the smell of disinfectant smacked him in the face, causing his nose to wrinkle involuntarily. Though the reaction was mostly physiological, he knew that part of it was psychological as well.

He hated hospitals.

And it wasn't just for the obvious reason, the memory of all the violent acts that had caused him to visit them through the years. No . . . his jaw twitched as he looked back and forth down the corridor . . . it was all the people that died here. It was the deaths that he hated.

Not the sudden violent deaths though . . . those he could deal with . . . no, it was the other kind that bugged him.

The slow lingering kind.

That was the kind that hospitals specialized in. The kind that give you time to think about this life before you go on to the next one. The kind that gave you time to think about why your visitors' chairs were empty.

The kind that sucked.

No . . . a faint scowl crossed his face as he started walking down the hall . . . that's not the death that he wanted. Really, give Andy Flynn two pops in the back of the skull any day over a deserted room and a bunch of beeping monitors. That was no way to die when you lived a life like his. One filled with too much booze and too many women.

Speaking of women . . . his footsteps faltered slightly when he caught sight of the one that had lately begun to haunt his dreams.

She was crying.

Seeing her like that . . . a true weeping, not watery eyes manufactured to manipulate or guilt . . . he stopped cold. And staring at her so vulnerable and exposed he felt a flicker of something in his gut. Something beyond empathy and pain at seeing her hurting . . . it was something else.

Longing.

That's what it was . . . his gaze shifted slightly to the left . . . longing.

And it was pissing him off.

Of course she was his type . . . difficult . . . but she was also his boss. Greats legs or not, that's what she was to him. And then of course there was the little matter of her husband. A husband that unfortunately wasn't a putz.

It probably would have been easier for Flynn if he was.

Still though, boss or no boss, putz or no putz, Andy still wanted to go over there and put his arm around another man's wife. He wanted to pull her close and smell that hint of girly perfume that she wore. That perfume that drove him mad. And then he wanted to breathe her in and whisper a wonderful lie into her ear.

That everything would be okay.

What bullshit that was. Another kid was dead for no good fucking reason. So yeah, he knew that there was no logic to this desire of his . . . but when was the last time he had a logical thought when it came to a woman?

Exactly.

So instead of doing this stupid thing that he so badly wanted to do, he does something else . . . he gives her a minute. And he does this because that's what she would do for him.

They don't share things.

No . . . his jaw twitches as their days together begin to flip through his memory . . . that's not true. They share a lot of things. They have a lot in common . . . too much perhaps. That's most likely why they hated each other on sight.

Well . . . his head tipped slightly to the side . . . that and the fact that he was an obnoxious prick. And the fact that he had admittedly _stayed_ an obnoxious prick for far too much of their initial time together. But such was the story of his life . . . being an obnoxious prick that is. Anyway though, those days are long past. Now they're . . . well, he doesn't know what they are. But he does know that seeing her hunched over, wiping away her tears with an obviously soggy handkerchief had forced his hand to involuntarily clench into a fist.

There's that.

Actually worse than that though is knowing that, as much as he wanted to . . . she would never allow him to walk over there and comfort her. Whatever shift had been happening between them, they definitely hadn't reached that day yet. And actually now that she was married . . . the blonde curls slowly began to rise . . . that day might never come.

When their eyes lock he knew that the proper thing to do in her book . . . the _polite _thing to do anyway . . . would be for him to look away.

But he doesn't.

Being polite just wasn't his style. And of course for all of her old fashioned southern charm . . . it really wasn't her style either. So as he stared unabashedly at her . . . she stared right back at him.

The tears were still trickling down her face.

After a few seconds he tipped his head slightly as his lip curled up. It wasn't so much a smile as an expression of empathy. He was telling her that he gets it . . . that he knows why she's so sad. That it wasn't the one dead kid.

It was all the ones before . . . and all the ones that would come in the future.

And he knew from the faint, watery smile that he received back that she understood. And then she took a shuddering breath and scrubbed her hands across her face. Even from his position ten feet away he could hear the sob being forced down again.

Now they were going to pretend.

She stood to meet him.

"Lieutenant."

"Ma'am."

Her voice was soft and husky with grief. His voice was hard and filled with regret.

So much regret.

And in that moment there were so many things that he wanted to say to her . . . but instead he said nothing.

Again . . . he closed the last few steps between them . . . the story of his life.

Then he saw her close her eyes right before she took a breath. And when she looked up at him again he knew that something was different. Something had shifted.

She was pissed.

Pissed . . . his hand slipped into his pocket . . . now that was something that he understood. Spending his life slogging his way through the filth of society, pissed was his default position. It was how he got through the day.

Days.

So many of them now that he'd lost count. But that right there . . . that righteous fury always bubbling just beneath the surface . . . _that_ was what made them different than the others. Because he knew what that look on her face meant. She was about to kick some ass.

Atlanta style.

She tried so hard to be good, to be diplomatic . . . to behave like somebody in her position should. And the others, they attempted to keep her on the even path, but not Flynn.

He always liked her better when she was bad.

But he knew that was selfish, that he shouldn't encourage her . . . that he was just looking to cultivate that little part of her that he could see was so much like him.

And thinking about that now, as he saw that glint in her eyes . . . the one he'd often seen in the mirror . . . he was suddenly filled with sadness. They invested too much of themselves in these cases. He worried about the cost. That their pursuit of truth and justice and all that other bullshit just took too much from them. That in the end it drove a wedge between them and everyone that they loved. This wasn't a job that could be done by haves.

He worried that they would all end up alone.

Flynn sighed as he saw her tucking the soggy handkerchief into her big, black bag . . . today wasn't the day for these thoughts though. Today they still needed to find justice for a dead boy.

Tomorrow he could sit with his seltzer water and wax philosophic.

"Lieutenant," her eyes are on the ground as she shifts her bag back on her shoulder, "I'm just going to run to the ladies room for a moment." And she's gone before he can respond.

His eyes follow her as she hurries away. And just as she yanks the bathroom door open the words slip softly past his lips.

"Yes, ma'am."

And then he goes over and leans against the wall.

And he waits.

* * *

_A/N 2: I think this is the shortest thing I've written in two years! Just as well though, I didn't want to make it a big story, it's just a little snippet of a connective tissue. It came to me when I was watching the actual flow of events where Provenza leaves her with his hanky and she's starting to cry and then the next thing we see is the team in the girl's house and Brenda's just bubbling with this rage. And for a change, as opposed to Gabriel or Provenza, it's Flynn who's murmuring to her to pull back and trying to ground her with a little human contact. She shakes it off but it was different for them. It was the first time I'd noticed a specific dynamic between them so I started picturing the bit in between when he went to pick her up at the hospital. And hence a scene was born :) I do think Flynn has a little thing for her. Perhaps not a romantic love per se, but there's something there when he looks at her. I see it kind of like swearing an oath to worship the queen._

_Not planning on continuing anything longer here, I just really wanted to get that out of my head. I MIGHT do something for Old Money from Brenda's POV but I don't know. The images in my head aren't being insistent right now so I'd rather leave them to percolate for the moment. I have so many other things to work on I can't allow myself to get sucked into a new forum. I'd never get anything done!_

_Hoping to get one more thing up tonight or tomorrow, and that will be back with my usual set of playthings. But hopefully you enjoyed this little deviation from the norm as it was fun writing Flynn though, he's a bit rougher around the edges than the CM crew. Feedback feeds the muse kids ;)_


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